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Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

marco.org

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Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#171

Post by astrodust »

cageface wrote: post #138
robomartin wrote: post #98

This illustrates the issue I highlighted in another thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4097141 The fact that Apple keeps hardware and, increasingly, software, so tightly controlled leads to a situation like that of this "new" Mac Pro. If the Apple hardware ecosystem were open like that of Windows you'd have major companies all over the world evolving the platform in wonderful ways. Performance would go up an…

The crowning irony is that it looks like the digital creative set is going to be pushed into the arms of Microsoft, for so long the subject of their scorn. If you want a fast digital workstation now Windows is your only reasonable option.

Discounting home-made computers, which the big names are not interested in competing with, where you can you source a workstation that's more powerful than the 12-core Mac Pro?

The Dell T7600 with 2x2.2GHz 6-core Xeon chips and only 8GB of memory and a 500GB drive comes out at $4,300. The Mac Pro with 2x2.4GHz 6-core, 12GB and a 1TB drive is only $3,800.

Unless I'm missing something, the Mac Pro is still a better deal, even for Windows.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#173

Post by astrodust »

planetguy wrote: post #14
hristov wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because they want to clear out some parts, or finish up supply agreements as Marco suggested.

I really doubt it. As long as there's a few customers willing to buy it, and as long as they can make what must be a ridiculously large profit margin on them, they're gonna continue to make 'em.

I think Apple's "ridiculously large" profit margin is lower than other vendors on their high-end workstations.

Dell charges through the roof for memory. 16GB of 1600MHz ECC memory for only $700 more? Wow, that's thrifty!

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#174

Post by icefox »

petercooper wrote: post #74
nirvana wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read recently that the Mac Pro accounts for less than %2 of Apple's Mac sales. Since thunderbolt basically is a PCI express cable, there's nothing to stop people from building external cases that can hold PCI express cards, like the Mac Pro can. Since thunderbolt is becoming prevalent across the line, I can't really see a need for the Mac Pro so much anymore. True it is nice in some situations to put all your hard…

there's nothing to stop people from building external cases that can hold PCI express cards, like the Mac Pro can. Such a thing has been announced: http://www.magma.com/thunderbolt.asp then the answer Apple's intending people to take may be a high end iMac. Maybe, but the 3.4GHz i7 - currently the highest CPU in the iMac range - still comes in at 2-3x slower than the highest end current Mac Pro CPU.. and there are E5…

Very cool, but wow I wasn't expecting the price to be at almost a grand.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#176

Post by astrodust »

rdl wrote: post #166
mcantelon wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Man, those were some shitty experiences. I did IT at the time for a Mac-friendly company and had no issues with the clones of the day.

The problem with them was that they were better than the Apple products of the time, thus killing Apple's margins. (although, really, most Apple products of the mid 1990s were abortions of various kinds -- Performa and Centris especially, and the weird education-channel-specific stuff. Good Macs stopped with the IIfx and IIci and began again with something around 1998)

In any batch of Apple products from the pre-Tim Cook days there were always a few solid products and a whole bunch to pad out the channel. They were junk that was simply intended to clutter up shelves and take up space in retail stores to command more presence.

I know people that ran their Quadra into the ground and only gave up on them, reluctantly, when the PowerMac equivalents became embarrassingly faster. Expensive, as was everything in that time, but irreplaceable.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#177

Post by jsz0 »

aphyr wrote: post #50
AndrewNoNumbers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd politely like to ask.. What, besides A/V work, is a 6+ core OS X machine necessary for?

Scientific computing, system modeling, numerics, CAD/CAM, visualization, developing highly concurrent software, event processors, rendering, machine learning (esp vision/video/spatial stuff), genetic algorithms, databases, GIS, crypto, traffic processing, theorem proving, compiling stuff, exploratory data mining. Gaming, maybe. I routinely saturate my MBP's 4 HT cores. It's also nice to develop on the same architectu…

Good reasons but I wonder is the current/new generation 12-core Mac Pro inadequate for this? It could be better but it still seems to serve its purpose.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#178

Post by tedunangst »

ktizo wrote: post #149
tedunangst wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean 12-core. Who's selling 16-core CPUs? Also worth pointing out that the Mac Pro is one such system as you just described.

I don't mean 12 core, I mean 32 core. AMD is selling 16 core CPUs. And the Mac Pro is not a dual CPU, 32 core, twin graphics card machine, which is what I described. here is one company selling them - http://www.titanuscomputers.com I priced up a 32 core AMD machine with two 2GB Nvidia GTX 680 cards and it comes to just under $5000.

thanks.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#179

Post by astrodust »

gdubs wrote: post #63

A souped-up iMac and some sort of thunderbolt 'bay' for expansion cards would serve the pro market, one would think. A large-scale touch display would be on the wish-list as well. That's my complete guess as to where they might be headed. I can't really imagine that Apple is unaware of how important the pro market is to their image, if not the bottom line. Consider the strong ties with Pixar – they must get constant…

A touch screen display? Are you proposing everyone get gorilla arm (http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html)?

There's nothing wrong with the Mac Pro but the whiny ones who can't afford it or prefer to scoff at the price rather than recognize the value. Yes, we all want a smaller "Pro" system you can upgrade, but there's no market for it.

The sad truth is Apple sells only "thousands" of Mac Pro systems compared to "millions" of their more mainstream products. That they make them at all is interesting considering the expense that must go into designing them.

It's possible as Apple makes an increasing proportion of their revenue from iOS and are less threatened by the possibility of losing control of a portion of their OS X market that they might allow a few select manufacturers to produce and support a true workstation-class system. For Apple it'd be checks in the mail for licensing fees and an almost imperceptible loss of market share.

Re: Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”

#180

Post by w1ntermute »

betterth wrote: post #155
quanticle wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is that the most popular Linux distribution (Ubuntu) and one of the two most popular window managers (Gnome) are going in exactly the same direction as Apple and Windows. These two projects are so busy emulating what Apple and Windows do, they can't see that they're going to go right off the usability cliff for desktop users. That, more than anything either Apple or Microsoft does is what worries me…

As a strangely pertinent anecdote: I've been a Windows "poweruser" for a long time, and have never used much of Linux. I never had a real need for it. But I've been doing rails development lately and Windows kept getting in the way, and so many people are using OSX and I can't afford a Mac... so I tried Ubuntu. I'm using 12.04, and it's the first significant amount of time I've used spent with Ubuntu. I can say that…

> I really like gedit more than Notepad++

gedit is available on Windows too. If you really want to harness the power of Linux, run Vim. You'll see at least an order of magnitude in productiviy improvement.

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